Blu-ray Review: ‘Fargo’

I have been a fan Coen Brothers movies since I saw Raising Arizona, in the 1980s. The 1996 Academy Award winning film Fargo is one of my all-time favorite movies, though a couple others of their films also populate my top ten. Fargo marks the brothers’ return to their home state of Minnesota, though not all Minnesotans appreciated their portrayal. Between the dialect caricature and the film’s opening credits claim that it was based on a true story, there are plenty of people that felt more than a bit slighted by the film.

Fargo is the story of a Minnesota car salesman played expertly by William H. Macy, who is desperate for money. He comes up with a plan to extort money from his wealthy father-in-law and boss by staging his wife’s kidnapping. He is connected to a couple of thugs (Steve Buscemi and Peter Stormare,) but when he has second thoughts, things get terribly out of hand. The net begins to close in on the three when Police Chief Marge (Frances McDormand) takes the case. As relatively low budget film, Fargo follows the players around in the snow almost like a docudrama.

Almost 20 years since its release, 20th Century Fox has now released a remastered edition of the iconic film. Though it has been remastered, many will have a hard time noticing the differences between this release and the previous one. The source film is grainy, which is particularly noticeable in the lighter snow scenes. Considering the directors had to move production out of Minnesota to capture even more of the white stuff, snow is in a majority of the scenes. Close comparison will reveal some reduction in the amount of ghosting that older version suffered from, but many will have hard time referring to the transfer as high definition.

Unfortunately, there are no new special features in this remastered edition of Fargo either. The most notable extra is the half hour documentary Minnesota Nice, unfortunately not filmed in HD. It includes interviews with the main cast, the Coen brothers and Director of Photography Roger Deakins. The majority of the screen time is devoted to William H. Macy, Frances McDormand, and the Coen brothers, though Steve Buscemi and Peter Stomare share some interesting history. Also included are an audio commentary track, a trivia track, an “American Cinematographer” article, photo gallery, and a couple of trailers.

Packaged with the original theatrical release poster as cover art, a single blu-ray disc is all that is contained in this edition of Fargo. Like previous editions, the film is presented in a 1.85:1 widescreen aspect ratio throughout its runtime of 98 minutes. As mentioned before, the improvements are a little tough to pick out. Instead of Dolby TruHD, this remastered edition offers DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 and various Dolby offerings in English, Spanish and French. The audio is still a bit front heavy, but remember, this was a low budget film. If you don’t already have Fargo on blu-ray, this is probably the version to own, but it’s not an essential upgrade.

About Lance Roth

Lance Roth has over 10 years experience in the video game industry. He has worked in a number of capacities within the industry and currently provides development and strategy consulting. He participated in all of the major console launches since the Dreamcast. This videogame resume goes all of the way back to when they were written in DOS. You can contact Lance at RPGameX.com or [email protected]

One comment

It seems the reviewer doesn’t quite know the reach of the words he’s using.

“many will have a hard time noticing the differences between this release and the previous one.”

It is absolutely blatant that the old disc was plagued by Edge Enhancement. Also, the color scheme has slightly changedd and even the framing is slightly different”.

“many will have hard time referring to the transfer as high definition.”

I strongly suggest to the reviewer to pop the DVD of the movie, which is obviously worse than the already awful 2009 BD and then come back with a more proper assessment. This is an obvious HD transfer, and a very neutral one towards the source it uses, far from the awfully digitally tweaked 2009 BD.